


The Swapping Game

by Gospelofthewicked



Category: Original Work
Genre: Creepy children's games, Fridge Horror, Mirrors are spooky, Obsession, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26232826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gospelofthewicked/pseuds/Gospelofthewicked
Summary: Martyn was used to spending his birthdays alone, and didn't expect his eighth to be any different. Then, his wish for a friend miraculously came true, and his reflection began talking back to him. It felt almost too good to be true.
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: This short story features implications of child neglect, displays bullying, and includes the implication of the death of a child. Please proceed with caution and keep that in mind.

Martyn’s eighth birthday was no different from any other weekend, at first. He slid down the stairs in a pair of hole-ridden dinosaur pyjamas to the familiar sound of silence. His parents had left for work, and so he munched on a bowl of cereal in the corridor leading to the front door. Aunt Grace usually remembered to send a card, and he didn’t want to miss it coming through the letterbox. 

Once he’d finished his breakfast, he realised how boring staring at the letterbox was, and fetched some toys to accompany him. And, for a couple of minutes, it worked. T-Rex Jim chased the Barbies into the living room and back, biting their heads off one by one. Jim had just tackled the last doll standing, and was letting out a roar of victory, when Martyn became aware of his own voice, jolted from his fantasy world. There was no dinosaur attack or Barbie disaster, just him and his toys, his voice bouncing off the walls. Martyn picked up the last doll and began to make her talk again, but the fun had gone. He wished he had friends at school to ask over, but even if he did, they’d probably laugh at him for playing like a girl. Well, that was fine, Martyn didn’t care about them. 

He dispassionately screwed the heads back onto his barbie dolls, lining them up in his room. He left the bowl in the sink. Then, he scooted a chair over to the wall so that he could stand on it and see his reflection in the kitchen mirror. Resting his arms on the back of the chair, he leaned in until his face touched the glass.

“Hello me! You’re six today! Oh… there’s no use pretending. I wish I had a big birthday cake like everyone else. At least if it was a school day, Mrs Brown might give me some sweets, and my parents would have to talk about my birthday because she’d ask them, and they’d say happy birthday!” 

He lifted his hands in the air in exasperation, before covering his face with them. “I wish anyone would tell me happy birthday and mean it.”

Silence filled the house once more and he squeezed his eyes shut. Then, came the sound. Close, yet muffled, like someone talking through a closed window.

“Um, happy birthday!” said his own voice.

Martyn gasped, lifting his face to find his reflection looking down sheepishly. He screamed and fell back off the chair, whacking the back of his head on the unforgiving floor. Skull pounding with pain, he crawled under the table.

He could see his reflection peering over from its vantage point on the chair, forehead creased with worry. Seeing his own big blue eyes widen further with such fearful emotion was strangely uncomfortable, and Martyn found himself touching his own face to make sure he wasn’t copying. Nursing the bump on his head, Martyn peeked out from under the table and nervously made eye contact. His reflection let out a big sigh of relief, and smiled.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just so excited to meet you properly!”

“You’re… me.” Martyn said slowly, standing up. Then, he remembered his manners. “Thank you for wishing me a happy birthday. Wait, are you my birthday wish come true? Oh my gosh, do you want to be friends!”

His reflection blinked a bit. “Well, I’ve been here the whole time, obviously, but I was too shy to talk until today. It’s my birthday wish that we become friends, actually.”

“Friends.” Martyn whispered. “Hey, will you be in my bedroom mirror if I go upstairs? I can’t see you well from here.”

Mirror Martyn let out a full belly laugh, almost doubling over. Martyn had never laughed like that, at best he’d let out a quiet giggle in private. “Of course, silly! I’m your reflection. Wherever you go, I get dragged along.”

Forgetting to put the chair back, Martyn raced upstairs and sat in front of his dusty dressing mirror. Sure enough, his reflection plopped down opposite him.

“Tell me about yourself.” he demanded, clasping his hands together. And so, his reflection began.

The morning flew by as Martyn learned of a world that was grey and glittering, a scraped up collection of the cold fragments of his own. Martyn set up his five favourite toys in front of the mirror so that his new friends could touch their reflected counterparts. Through a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ they each got two, leaving one cast aside in case one of their toys got ‘taken out’. 

The wild tale they weaved of a Barbie uprising and a morally conflicted giant lizard went on for so long that he didn’t notice that the sun had sunk below the view of his window, or that his parents weren’t back in time for dinner again. He lay on the carpet, letting out a contented sigh.

Soon, his new friend became a staple of his day. He’d keep Martyn entertained with silly faces on the long weekends, and whisper to him from the puddles on the playground. The other kids laughed at Martyn, but he didn’t care. In the morning he’d chatter incessantly about what Martyn did in his sleep, and at night he’d tell Martyn stories about what they would do if they were together. And, of course, they spent a lot of time looking at each other. Mirror-Martyn’s eyes were a lighter blue, his equally messy mop of blond hair a little fairer, and his skin greyer. Had his reflection always looked slightly different, or was it just when he’d begun talking back that these changes had happened?

Martyn, for his part, would always let Mirror-Martyn pick toys first, and would show him the food on his tray so that he could try some. Apparently all mirror food tasted the same, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

Soon, he began sneaking one of his mum’s compact mirrors into his school bag every morning. There were a few close calls where it would get thrown around and his heart would squeeze with fear that the mirror had shattered, but so far it had miraculously survived. One day, when the bus was late and he’d been given the go-ahead to walk home, he pulled the mirror from his trouser pocket and asked the question that had been playing at his mind for far too long.

“Hey, mirror-me, I have a question about reflection stuff.”

Mirror-Martyn’s face lit up the way it always did when Martyn got out from school, before he put on a cavalier expression “I may just know a thing or two about that.”

“Do the reflections of other people talk to you? Or are you… on your own in there?”

“No, they’re just copies.” he shrugged.

“Oh... that must be pretty lonely.”

Mirror-Martyn looked away for a moment, expression unreadable. Then, a goofy smile spread across his face. “You care about meeee.”

“Of course I do!” Martyn shouted back, loud enough to make the lady on the pavement opposite spare him a concerned glance. He dropped his voice back down to a loud whisper. “You’re the best friend ever! I just wish that you could come to my side, or I could visit you in yours. Then we could play properly.”

He looked away from his mirror as he crossed the street, checking both ways for cars. And so, he couldn’t see the spine of his reflection stiffen, or the glint that came into his eyes. All he heard was Mirror-Martyn’s voice, friendly and sincere.

“I know a way that we can do something like that… but you have to trust me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that contains the bullying, fyi!

Martyn’s heart soared as his foot landed firmly beyond the finish line. He slowed his pace as he reached the teacher standing on the sidelines, who tossed him a first place medal like it wasn’t the greatest achievement of his life. He walked back around the track with his egg still balancing on the spoon, feeling a puff of pride when it didn’t so much as wobble. Soon, he reached the cutlery box and dropped his spoon back in, keeping the egg safely curled up in his palm. It was the first time Martyn had received a medal in any sports day activity, let alone the egg and spoon race, and he knew his bestest friend would be pleased with him.

He sat on the patch of grass where the kids who had completed at least five activities were allowed to rest for the remainder of the day. Martyn watched an ant scurry along the petals of nearby buttercup, its skin tinted yellow.

Across the field, he heard the school bell ring, and took off down the shadowy path between the trees back to Martyn’s house. Soon, he came across the large puddle that had blocked Martyn’s path earlier that day. He crouched and peered into it. 

“Hi!” exclaimed Martyn, his grinning face appearing in the puddle, “It’s so cold in here! How do you live with it?”

Mirror Martyn shook his head and tutted, gently laying the egg down on the pavement. “More like it’s too hot out here! But did you see, I won you a medal!”

Martyn let out a squeal of delight and jumped excitedly, causing the water to ripple. “Can we swap back now? I want to hold it!”

Mirror Martyn nodded, placing his palm flat against the surface of the water. Martyn followed suit, and when their hands connected, each reached into the water. The world flashed in silver, and both emerged on the other side. Martyn fell back onto the pavement, and Mirror Martyn let out a sigh of relief as he resumed his rightful place. 

Martyn carefully tucked the medal into his pocket and began to walk, holding his egg in one hand and taking out the pocket mirror to hold in the other. “I can’t believe we won!”

Mirror Martyn allowed himself a smug grin “I think I won the swapping game this time. Looks like I’ve got you five nil.”

Martyn pouted “Actually, I’ve been having a good think in there! I believe I’ve found you a name.”

Mirror Martyn tilted his head “A name? But I have your name.”

“Yes, but what about your own name. Because we’re not exactly the same person, are we?”

“My own name…” Mirror Martyn breathed. “Well-well what is it?”  
“Fleck! Because it sounds like it’s taken from reflection but shortened to be cool, and I think real people can be called Affleck, so it’s sort of a proper name.”

“Fleck…”

“Do you not like it?” Martyn asked, voice tinged with worry, “I have other names! Like Bob.”

His reflection giggled “I will not be called Bob. I think Fleck is a great name, especially because…” he touched his two index fingers together “Because you picked it. So I know it’s a good name.”

Martyn’s face lit up. “So, do I win the swapping game today? Because it sounds like you were admitting defeat.”

Fleck sighed and grumbled “Fine, you win one round. One.”

“Thank you, Fleck.” Martyn winked, and his reflection’s frown gave way to a smile truly matching his own.

Suddenly, his smiling face vanished as the compact mirror was smacked from Martyn’s hand. Martyn gasped and looked up, only to come face to face with Lewis from the class above, who always liked tripping him on his way into school. He didn’t know what he had done to be singled out, but he knew that the other boy was always angry. Right now was no different, he was scowling at Martyn like he was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen.

“Are you seriously talking to your own reflection?”

“N-no, I was just- I’ve got to get home now.”

Lewis’ fist clenched in preparation for a punch to the stomach. Martyn acted without thinking, hurling the egg at the other boy’s face and then ducking under his arms. As Lewis cried out and wiped at his face, Martyn scoured the bushes for the mirror. He quickly found it lying not far from where it had been lost with a crack going down the centre and stopping halfway down the glass.

“Fleck, are you okay?!” he asked desperately. His reflection had changed, a small fissure ran down his face, matching how much of his face the crack would have taken up when the mirror smashed. Still, he managed a lopsided, if nervous, smile.

“Martyn, we need to swap now, just do it!”

Hearing Lewis’ thundering footsteps, Martyn nodded and pressed his hand to the broken glass. By the time Lewis reached him, Fleck stood in his place.  
“I’m going to- what’s wrong with your face?” Lewis asked, his face cooling from anger to something very much different… perhaps fear? Fleck liked it. He pointed at the crack that ran down from his forehead and stopped only at his chin. There was no blood to be seen through the slit, only darkness.

“You mean this little thing?” he asked sweetly. Lewis stuttered, looking him up and down.

“How about I show you something?” Fleck wondered aloud. Before Lewis could answer, he lifted his hand to his face and pushed his nails into the crack. Then, he pulled half of his face back.

Later that week, Martyn sat in his bedroom with an ice lolly. He had snuck it upstairs so Fleck could have one too, though he had to be incredibly careful not to let any drip on the carpet.

“Is your crack getting any better?” he asked between slurps.

“I don’t think so.” Fleck said, gingerly licking the sweet treat, before pulling a face. 

“Not your favourite food?”

“Not at all!”

“Aaw, I wanted to get you a reward.” Martyn huffed, his shoulders slouching in defeat. “Whatever you said to Lewis, it worked! He hasn’t been in school for the whole week.”

“Maybe he moved away.” Fleck said.


	3. Chapter 3

Martyn’s face screwed up in concentration as he added the last few labels to the pie chart on his revision card. He just had to draw a rectangle around the labels neatly and everything would be perfe-

“Are you done yeeeet.” Fleck groaned, causing Martyn to misplace his pen by a millimeter. He’d placed the hand mirror flat against the desk so Fleck would stop doing weird faces to distract him, which had only made him talk more.

“Ugh, I told you, I’m busy! Just be quiet!”

“I could help you revise, you know.” Fleck muttered sullenly. Martyn didn’t respond, and he went quiet. Finally. Okay, so cumulative frequency was-

“Why don’t you take a break? You’ve been at this for, like, half an hour.”

Martyn grit his teeth, biting back an insult, and took a long, deep breath.  
“My GCSEs are important, Fleck. If you don’t want to let me study, I’ll put you in the drawer again.”

“I can just leave this mirror, dummy.”

Martyn’s eye twitched “Yes, but there are no more mirrors in here, so shut it!”

“Alright, alright, fine! I’ll be quiet.”

And so he was. For a record six minutes.

“I can’t take this anymore! I’m so bored. Your desk is boring to look at. You’re boring. Everything is boring.”

The boy slammed his hands down on the desk and stood up, tightly gripping the mirror and walking to the bedroom.

“Wait, no, I’m sorry, I really will be quiet this time!” Fleck protested, but it was too late. Martyn opened the drawer of his bedside table and placed the hand mirror face down inside it.

“Martyn, wait! You know I hate being alone in the dark.” he pleaded.

“Too bad.” Martyn said, and shut him in. He returned to his desk and let out a sigh of frustration, before getting back to his flashcards.

Fleck didn’t bother leaving his mirror to search for something reflective in the office, much preferring sulking to appearing desperate. He resisted the pull in his core to return to Martyn’s side, glaring up at the darkness above him. 

It wasn’t like he needed to be with Martyn all the time. He was a reflection, sure, it was hard to disobey, but they were clearly different people. He had his own name, after all. But Martyn wouldn’t put another person in a drawer because they were annoying.

Fleck gingerly reached up to touch his face, fingers tracing the crack that marred it. He hadn’t told him, but it had hurt. The pain had seared across his face in an instant, and for a moment he’d worried all of him was going to crack in two. Martyn wouldn’t forget what he had done for him. They were best friends after all. Fleck would just have to wait.

Martyn never took the mirror out of the drawer.

Instead, Fleck would catch him at breaks in bathroom mirrors, or in the grimy bus window. Martyn would smile wearily and acknowledge him. He would tell him he’d love to play, but his GCSEs were coming up now and he didn’t have time. Fleck would have to wait. Just a little longer.

They only played the swapping game once in all that time, when Martyn was sick and begged Fleck to take a class for him. The joy of being asked for help was almost too much to handle, but Fleck happily agreed, doing his best to take notes about things he didn’t understand and laugh at the jokes of Martyn’s friends. He even managed to eat a whole lunch-tray’s worth of food, though it didn’t take long for it to come back up. When he was sent home, instead of the praise he’d been hoping for, Martyn berated him for failing at the one job he’d been given, and told him that his notes were useless. Fleck tried to explain that he hadn’t understood anything in the lessons, but Martyn was too angry to care.

But he was busy. So Fleck waited.

Late night revision sessions and morning cramming overtook their lives to a soundtrack of clicking pens and screeching school bells. Fleck slowly began to lose himself, his waiting turning him soft and empty. Then, the noise stopped.

He awoke from a dreamless sleep to Martyn standing before him in a black and white suit, with a bow and shoes to match. His hair was gelled, which Fleck didn’t like the feeling of on his own head.

“Oh, wow, what’s the special occasion?”

“Oh, hey Fleck.” Martyn answered nonchalantly, “I’m getting ready for prom.”

Fleck gasped. “Wow, is it here already? Thank goodness you’ve got us both looking great, I can’t wait to do some dancing!”

“Yeah, about that…” Martyn said, a frown working its way onto his face, “I really want this night to be good, okay? So, no weird reflection stuff. Just be normal, alright?”

“Oh… but I won’t be much fun if I’m not doing anything.” Fleck protested weakly.

“If you do something, the boys are going to notice, and I’m just starting to get into their group! So please, just… don’t be, um, don’t be yourself.”

Fleck’s throat closed up. Martyn didn’t want to talk to him? Who on earth were ‘the boys’? Why couldn’t he have fun, too? But Martyn was waiting expectantly for a response, so he put on his best smile and nodded enthusiastically “Ay, ay, captain!”

He didn’t miss the way Martyn rolled his eyes, or how his smile soured at the corners. It was alright, he told himself. Just a bit more waiting. Fleck didn’t know it, but this was the last time Martyn would ever speak to him. After months of not moving on his own, he forgot how to, and eventually became a simple reflection once more.


	4. Chapter 4

As Martyn grew, so did his reflection. It dutifully followed his every move, growing out its hair as he did in his teen years, giving a dry, nervous chuckle at job interviews, and leaning in to kiss a beautiful woman with golden hair. Martyn had long since forgotten about his old imaginary friend. The reflection was just that, a reflection. Until a chance accident, that was.

Martyn’s reflection chased him up the stairs as he rushed after a little girl holding a football.

“No running on the stairs!”, he shouted, “and put the football down!”

The girl turned her head back to laugh at him. As she did so, she lost her footing and tripped on the final step. The ball went flying through the doorway that lay beyond, straight into a bedroom. The pair watched on in mute horror as it hit the dressing table, knocking everything off the table’s surface as it rolled along. One of those objects was a mirror. As it crashed to the floor, the glass cracked.

First there was the sting, then an awareness of the sting, then an awareness that there was a him that felt it. Fleck was jolted back into being as his left eye fractured into infinitesimal burning shards. He stumbled back, clutching his eye, jolted into reality by the coldness of the ground beneath his feet .Bits of glass fell into his hand, and he bent his head so that the rest could fall out too. Ahead of him was a long dressing mirror, showing a bedroom. Martyn’s bedroom? But the walls were now yellow, not white, it was carpeted, and the toys strewn across were different, newer. Everything was smaller for some reason. Where his eye would have been were he standing was a large, spider-webbed crack. So that was what had woken him up. Then, his mind focused and he noticed that the room was not empty. 

In front of him stood a young man with curly blond hair and soft blue eyes, wearing a green dressing gown. He was looking down at a little girl in blue dungarees who was holding a football with a sheepish expression. Every movement the man made tugged at Fleck’s whole being, his body yearning to copy.

Suspicion seizing him, Fleck looked down at himself. He was in an adult’s body, wearing the same tattered green dressing gown. That meant…

Martyn ruffled the little girl’s hair. His eyes were tired but his mouth was smiling. As he spoke, the words obediently tore from Fleck’s throat in unison with his.

“Alice, what have I told you about playing with the football indoors?”

She pouted and handed the ball over “I’m sorry, daddy. But I just-” before she could come up with an excuse, a car horn blared outside. Martyn sighed.

“We’ll talk about this later, sweetpea, your mum’s waiting. Now have a good weekend with her, alright? No fighting!”

“Fine.” Alice grumbled, and took his hand as they went down the stairs. Fleck resisted the urge to follow, too shocked to even process it. How long had he been gone for?

Over the next few weeks, Fleck did his best to act as a normal reflection without losing his sense of self, following wherever Martyn pulled him. As Martyn slept, he pieced his broken eye together until it was near unnoticeable.. He learned that Martyn was a man with a job now, and had a daughter called Alice, who was only there on weekdays. Martyn loved Alice. He would watch her favourite awful children’s shows with her again and again, he would help her with spelling homework, he would give her cuddles and kisses every night and read her stories. He even had nicknames for her, like ‘sweetpea’ and ‘duckling’.

Fleck hated Alice.

Everything about her rankled; how she clung to Martyn’s leg as he tried to put her to bed, how incredibly loud she was every waking hour, and how she woke up crying most nights, forcing Martyn out of his bed to console her. What he hated most of all was the way Martyn looked at her.

No matter how she’d fuss, his expression would always be the same, ceaseless doting. Like she was the most incredible thing in the world. Fleck remembered a little boy on his birthday staring at him with awestruck eyes and his heart stung. Why did she, a useless, needy child who couldn’t even speak yet-why did she get to have his love?!

At first, Fleck had pondered revealing his presence to Martyn, daydreaming of a tearful reunion. Fleck would tell him how’d he disintegrated into nothingness without his attention and Martyn would laugh and say ‘I never forgot you’ with that perfect smile and they’d never be apart again. But over time, his dream had crumbled. Even if he were to return, it was clear Martyn only cared for his precious little sweet pea. He could see it when he closed his eyes, Martyn wearily brushing him off again- too bad- and he would be alone in the grey forever.

No, this was better. At least this way, Martyn would smile at him while brushing his teeth or doing his tie. Unintentional, sure, but any slim shard of hope was better than falling back into non-existence. If only Martyn could look at him like he looked at the child. For a long time Fleck lived like that, desperate hope and damning despair his only companions. Then, one day, the solution hit him.

One afternoon, as Martyn had dozed on the sofa, Fleck had taken a risk and detached from him. He leapt from reflection to reflection across the house until he made it to the garden, where Alice was playing. She was jumping in a puddle over and over, which seemed to generate the same amusement each time.The mere sight of her filled him with instant anger, but it was still preferable to the apathy that faced him otherwise, and so he lurked far in the background of the puddle’s reflection. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice him. Even if she did, how would she explain it?  
After several minutes of flooding her shoes, she paused, looking down with a thoughtful expression on her face. Fleck froze. Had she seen him? 

Alice crouched down, sticking her tongue out. She giggled and Fleck rolled his eyes. Then, he realised she was playing with her reflection. Like father, like daughter, huh? 

From his side of the puddle, her reflection crouched down also and copied, obscuring his view. One was bad enough, why did there have to be two? He’d not paid much attention to Alice’s reflection before, it clearly had no mind of its own, as it was with all other reflections he’d encountered. If it did, it would likely have tried to swap over long ago, who wouldn’t want to be in that little girl’s shoes? Really, it was a shame he wasn’t her reflection. It wouldn’t be hard at all to lure her over.

It was at that moment that the path to escape opened up for him. He slunk back to Martyn’s side, and there he stayed, until nightfall. This was going to take a while, so he needed all the time he could get. 

As the house fell silent, he loomed over Alice’s reflection in the mirror that stood opposite her bed. Martyn’s bed. Fleck dug his fingers into the crack in his face, then tugged, pulling his face apart. Then, he reached out for the sleeping reflection of the little girl.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the one with the heavy implications, proceed with caution.

Alice woke to the familiar sound of her dad on the phone in the living room. She tumbled out of bed and slid down the stairs in her fluffy pink unicorn onesie, with the hood pulled up so that she felt like a proper unicorn princess. She’d been planning on jumping out at her dad from behind the door to surprise him, but she could tell he was using his serious work voice and so resigned herself to sitting in the kitchen to wait. It was her birthday in a few days anyway, and she knew they’d get to spend all day together then.

After a few minutes, it became clear that her dad’s serious conversation was not ending anytime soon. Alice huffed and trudged back to her room to play with her dollhouse. Her dad had got her a massive one for her last birthday, and all of her friends were incredibly jealous, which she secretly loved. She opened it up and began arranging furniture to prepare for a barbie ball. That or a wrestling match, both ideas were tempting. Or how about a wrestling ball? Yes!

However, it turned out that basking in the admiration of your friends was harder when there weren’t any friends there. And since her daddy was busy, she had to do all the voices. One boring wrestling match later, she flung herself back onto the carpet, bonking her head. 

“I’m so booooored.” she groaned.

“Oh dear, sounds like you need someone to play with.” said a voice. Her voice. Something a little like fear curled around her spine, and she looked around her room, wondering if she’d imagined it.

“Here, in the mirror.” the voice said from her dressing table. She climbed onto the stool and looked into her little hand mirror laying flat on its surface. Her reflection waved at her.

“Hey, Alice, it’s me, Alice!” It giggled. Alice stifled a shout of surprise before laughing. 

“Hello me, it’s me, me!” she waved back. “I can’t believe I have a magic reflection, it’s just like a book I read.”

“There’s a book about talking reflections?”

“Well, it was about a boy and his shadow. But I always knew I was special.”

Alice missed the way her reflection rolled its eyes as it nodded. “Yes, very special. That’s why I decided to, um…. to reveal I was alive and play with you! Let’s be friends!”

“Hmm… only if you do half of the characters in my fighting show.”

“Fine.” it said, “as long as you don’t tell your daddy about me.”

“Deal!”

From then on, her new best friend became a staple of her day. She’d play with Alice when her daddy was asleep, and do silly voices to stave off boredom at her mummy’s house. After a while however, all the games began to blend together. Though she was grateful for her reflection’s company, Alice wished they could do something new and exciting. When she voiced this to her companion, Mirror-Alice grinned widely, showing all of her teeth.

“Have you heard of the swapping game?”

“No, what’s that?” she asked.

“Well, you put your hand on the glass, and so do I, and if we concentrate really hard, we can swap over. You can explore my world and I can explore yours! And then we put our hands together again and swap back! It’s really fun.” her reflection crooned.

“Oh, okay…. Can we just do it for one minute? To see if I like it or not?” 

At the sound of her hesitation, Mirror-Alice grit her teeth, though her smile didn’t break. “Of course!”

“Alright…” Alice murmured, placing her palm on the glass, pressing it against her reflection’s hand. It was then that she saw something she had never noticed before. The thinnest black strings around her reflection’s elbows, wrists, neck, and legs. They jerked as she moved, as though she were a puppet. Mirror Alice saw what she was looking at, and her eyes grew cold and angry. She reached through the glass, a vice-like grip on Alice’s arm.

Alice screamed.

Martyn awoke to the sound of his daughter’s cries and jumped out of bed, racing to her room. He found her sitting on the floor, crying and hugging her knees. 

“What’s wrong, sweet pea?” he asked, trying to keep his voice soothing instead of concerned as he sat next to her.

“I saw a monster!” she wailed, gripping his arm tightly, “A big creepy shadow monster!”

Martyn shook his head, getting up and ‘looking’ for the monster everywhere he could think of, behind the door, under the bed, somewhere in the cupboard. Once he’d shown her that the monster wasn’t anywhere, Alice’s sobs quieted, turning into embarrassed sniffling.

“Monster check complete, no monsters!” he announced with a cheery voice, causing her to let out a tiny laugh. “Now, how about we have some breakfast together?”

Alice smiled, wiping her arm across her face to remove the tears, and nodded.

Alice didn’t take long to forget about her ‘monster’, which relieved Martyn, as the holidays were ending soon and he didn’t want her to be plagued by nightmares so close to the start of the school year. He had enough trouble getting Alice into the car when she wasn’t tired and grumpy. However, as one problem vanished, another appeared.

As the weeks wore on, a disgusting smell began to pervade the house, that of something rotting. No matter how many experts he called in, none were able to locate the cause, and soon it was so strong he began to avoid the house altogether. 

Eventually, he had to arrange to leave Alice at her mother’s while he couch-surfed and searched for a new house. Whenever he went to visit, her mother would always say the same thing, that Alice seemed completely detached from her now, and only talked to her when Martyn was brought up. Then, Alice would come racing down the stairs at the sound of his voice, almost barrelling him over with a hug.

“Be nice to mummy.” He’d say.

“I only want you.” She’d respond, her cold hand clutching his tightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If someone's read this to end, well done, you! Hope you enjoyed this labour of hate :P

**Author's Note:**

> I actually hate the story, but since it's the first thing longer than one chapter I've ever finished, you bet I'm inflicting it on the internet.


End file.
